Oh no MMR scandal-er is back

[JerryFerry]

Because Trump isn't enough, the MMR-autism fraudster is back

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/18/not-just-mmr-charlatan-we-should-denounce

Hah, VIOLET your reference to Carol Gray reminds me of the time DS2 got fed up with our attempts to modify certain behaviours and loudly announced "NO social stories!" to his teacher.

If anyone was a purveyor of 'fake news' it was Wakefield.

Deliberate, damaging, pernicious faked up 'trial' results, that harmed, misled and guilt-tripped thousands of parents. A self-aggrandising fraud.

What a turd.

Not to mention the parents he duped into allowing their kids to be his subjects! Nothing about his 'story' is in any way redeeming!

to, I would argue they weren't being written or presented properly ;)

I've written a couple of basic social stories for a child. The look of loathing I was given for having explained why outside is necessary was priceless. Worked though, which was good!:o

Don't forget his unauthorised spinal taps on vulnerable children. Or collecting blood samples at his kids parties. So he could try to flog his single measles vaccine and make money from lawsuits. How anyone can still be giving him airtime is beyond me.

VIOLET I don't know, I just think he didn't want to comply. He's fairly bright and very outspoken :-)

Although generally I see your point.
We tried one after saying "you can't come downstairs naked" when he was about 11 and did.
Response "I'm not naked: I've got my socks on"
Story which resulted specifically mentioned underpants ...

Ben Goldacre defends Andrew Wakefield in this article:

www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/

It is madness to imagine that one single man can create a 10-year scare story. It is also dangerous to imply – even in passing – that academics should be policed not to speak their minds, no matter how poorly evidenced their claims. Individuals like Wakefield must be free to have bad ideas. The media created the MMR hoax, and they maintained it diligently for 10 years. Their failure to recognise that fact demonstrates that they have learned nothing, and until they do, journalists and editors will continue to perpetrate the very same crimes, repeatedly, with increasingly grave consequences.

Wakefield is a horrendous individual no-doubt responsible for the deaths of children from preventable diseases, but he should never have been given airtime.

Scientific illiteracy is the real issue. And now there's a scientific illiterate in the White House, Wakefield won't be the only charlatan taking advantage. Can we rely on the media over there to give people the facts?

No social stories for ds1. It's survival guides and instruction manuals :o

Used sparingly.

DS2'S understanding of the world has been greatly enhanced by songs. Littlebabybum has a song for everything. Could do to find one about hair cuts because it's halfway down his back and a mass of split ends.

IMO Wakefield is now so invested in his take on the MMR/autism 'story' that he cannot back down.
And The Crazy One is allowing him a platform....

I'd agree with Goldacre 100% if it weren't for the deliberateness of the deception that started it all... the continued deception even after discredited.

That the meeja chose to run with it was equally abhorrent - I remember writing some choice emails to editors and owners at the time! Wakefield's deception wouldn't have had the impact it did if not for equally self aggrandising journalistic liars and frauds!

And no, I have no faith in the Whitehouse staff or US journalists either!

Two deluded, greedy, meglomanics seeing eye to eye...how sweet.

On the plus side, this has to increase the chances of the crazy one, the charlatan and the smarmy brexiteer all being in the same room at the same time and suffering the same tragic freak exploding fake tan bottle accident...

Katy07: "It always amazes me that anyone can believe that the vaccine gives you autism - just look at how many people have the jab versus the number of people that have autism! Bit of a gap there I think."

Although I don't think that the MMR vaccine causes autism, it isn't necessarily a stupid idea in principle. There are lots of drugs (medicinal or recreational) that have a particular effect on some people but not others. The swine flu jab is known to cause narcolepsy in a small minority of people, but most are unaffected.

The reason this whole thing is an issue is that the first time round celebrities and indeed the Blairs (via that hippy woman they were linked to) initially followed / believed the claims which further fuelled media interest and credibility.

So Trump giving a potential platform to this does raise ground hog day like concerns.

I think social stories are regularly not used as intended.

They're not supposed to be mainly around instruction or behaviour modification as such. They're supposed to give social understanding to contexts a person with ASC is missing. And her very too complicated mathematical equation to check that the right amount of context, adult transactional support and generalisation is included, is supposed to avoid it being a list of dos and don'ts.

I can say this with authority as I have seen so many that do not get the balance right, and have struggled to get them right myself many times!

This is what I love about MNing.

1 thread, 2 entirely different conversations going on and nobody is batting an eyelid

It's like sitting in a cafe / pub and breaking into two discussion groups

noble, he doesn't really defend him exactly but points out that the original findings were ignored and buried by the press, and may have continued to be so till AW's work was peer reviewed and then would have been discredited, until the Blairs caused doubt by not confirming mmr for Leo/ evading questions about it. Adding in Carole Caplin's nu ageisms (their 'life style coach') to the mix, resulted in the press going bananas as did celebs. Mmr take up nose dived thereafter. There were more articles about the Blairs in relation to this than AW.

Analysis of reports of AW v Leo B against mmr shots shows a direct impact of the LB reporting on Mmr take up.

There's loads if you google it wayfarer.

Multiplex autism is defined as more than one case in the same family. You tend to find broader autism phenotype in parents/grandparents etc and the traits are highly heritable.

Simplex autism is defined a sporadic case in which the affected individual has unaffected male siblings. We have three ds's - one very severely autistic, the other 2 are NT. I have 21 first cousins who are all having children - dh has five first cousins and a sibling - all having children. No autidm anywhere in sight. Lots of immune disorders though on one side of the family and conditions related to immune issues.

Simplex autism (which Also is not one thing) is thought to have a large environmental aspect to it. The environmental triggers are thought to be many - and I have certainly been in conferences where non-controversial scientists have implicated vaccination as an occasional environmental trigger.